The Geodetic-Geophysical Flight Mission GEOHALO on the HALO Aircraft

Abstract

The new German research aircraft HALO was equipped with an ensemble of geodetic-geophysical instrumentation to carry out geoscientific research in the tectonically active region of the Mediterranean. The instrumentation comprised two airborne spring-type gravimeters, scalar and vector magnetometers, GNSS zenith, sideward and nadir antennas, and a Laser altimeter. This HALO flight mission called GEOHALO could be carried out in June 2012. The mission flights took place over Italy and the adjacent seas, comprising seven parallel profiles from north-west to south-east over the Italien peninsula in a height of about 3,500 m with a length of about 1,000 km each and a line spacing of about 40 km. This presentation contains an overview on the challenges to integrate the scientific instrumentation onboard HALO. We discuss the feasibility and the performance of this instrumentation and present preliminary results from the measurements of the gravity field, of GNSS reflectometry, scatterometry and radio occultation, and of laser altimeter distances over the ocean. Altogether, GEOHALO is the first geoscientific mission on the HALO aircraft. Its success was possible only by the joint efforts of the group of German, Swiss and Spanish universities and research institutions, Italian authorities and institutions as well as by the financial and logistic support of the German Research Foundation, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, the German Aerospace Center and further national and international partners.